TDDS - 2020 Shelter-in-Place on a Desert Island Music Draft - BONUS 5

At the Drive-In - Relationship of Command (2000)


(https://www.allmusic.com/album/relationship-of-command-mw0000099225)

will add more later...

YES! I'm keeping my desert island selections to this side of the millennium, but I haven't decided if I'm going as far back as the year 2000 yet (strange to acknowledge that it was twenty years ago). If I do, there'd be exactly three albums I'd draft without question, and this would have been one of them. Excellent pick, the birth of contemporary post-hardcore, and an absolute firestarter of an album.
 
Another round that hasn't helped me narrow my choices before I go into the "nobody else is picking this stuff" annex. So here we go. In the Seventh Round on the Seventh Day I select:

Black Sabbath - Paranoid


When Spike picked Blizzard of Ozz I knew that if I were going to get any Ozzy it would probably be a Sabbath offering and while I'm actually really partial to their work with another singer, it is mostly the title cuts from those albums where as this is probably my favorite start to finish.

This album contains two firsts for me. The first song I learned on guitar (Iron Man) and the first song I ever sang with a band in front of an audience (War Pigs). And Paranoid (the song)is right up there on the all time classic list as well. And when I was a kid I thought Fairies Wear Bootswas the funniest thing ever - hey it was a different time and I was like 10... But definitely a great jam here, kind of the intro to doom/stoner metal, which really isn't my thing but I will enjoy listening to this album during my shelter. And it will long continue to provide a nice blueprint to making music of my own.

Side one
1. War Pigs
2. Paranoid
3. Planet Caravan
4. Iron Man

Side two
5. Electric Funeral
6. Hand of Doom
7. Rat Salad
8. Fairies Wear Boots

The Classic Albums series are mostly available on Prime for those who have it, or those that want to see this whole thing.
 
You were wise to pick this up. It wasn't my next choice, but certainly within the next two rounds after that.
There's one album I keep leaving on the table that is really the only one I fear getting selected but since it isn't even my favorite album from that band I'm not in a hurry to pick it either.
 
Screen Shot 2020-04-05 at 1.12.04 PM.png ''

Many arguments can be made over which Judas Priest album is their best. I ultimately had to decide between three of them, and came to the conclusion that Screaming For Vengeance scratches the itch. Another iconic voice in rock, and perhaps the current holder of the sceptre after Dio's passing, Rob Halford's incredible range and K.K. Dowling ability to really nail down that NWOBHM sound for others to follow.

1. "The Hellion" (Instrumental)
2. "Electric Eye"
3. "Riding on the Wind"
4. "Bloodstone"
5. "(Take These) Chains" (Bob Halligan, Jr.)
6. "Pain and Pleasure"
7. "Screaming for Vengeance"
8. "You've Got Another Thing Comin'"
9. "Fever"
10. "Devil's Child"

Hellion/Electric Eye is a great one-two punch, but don't sleep on the title track. Sure you probably all know "You've Got Another Thing Comin'", but as good as it is, I don't think it's the best song on this album, although arguably its most popular. If you're a fan of stadium-style rockers, give "Devil's Child" a listen.
 
^I gave plenty of consideration to that one. Probably my favorite Priest. Which one of us picked it up in 2008? I feel like I may have which is why it was on my alternates list (I was playing a ton of Rock Band back then and had this full album).
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
Been having problems with my internet since last night: I had to switch my phone into a hotspot, just to be able to post this:









The Prodigy - Music For the Jilted Generation (1994)




I give great praise to the movie Hackers which, honestly, doesn't hold up, but it did serve as my "gateway drug" into Techno and Electronica. "Voodoo People" and "One Love" immediately struck a chord in me and, after hearing "Poison" on a techno compilation I bought while stationed in Italy, I decided that I needed to find this album, and add it to my collection. As with my previous selection, Music For the Jilted Generation was more popular in the clubs, particularly the rave scene, than it was on the radio. It was a complete non-factor on the US charts, peaking at #198 on the Billboard 200, but was a success in the UK, peaking at Number One on the UK charts, and being certified platinum there.



Track Listing (links provided to songs released as singles):

  1. "Intro"
  2. "Break & Enter"
  3. "Their Law" (featuring Pop Will Eat Itself)
  4. "Full Throttle"
  5. "Voodoo People"
  6. "Speedway (Theme From Fastlane)"
  7. "The Heat (The Energy)"
  8. "Poison"
  9. "No Good (Start the Dance)"
  10. "One Love"
  11. "The Narcotic Suite: 3 Kilos"
  12. "The Narcotic Suite: Skylined"
  13. "The Narcotic Suite: Claustrophobic Sting"

Source: Wikipedia
 

hrdboild

Hall of Famer
YES! I'm keeping my desert island selections to this side of the millennium, but I haven't decided if I'm going as far back as the year 2000 yet (strange to acknowledge that it was twenty years ago). If I do, there'd be exactly three albums I'd draft without question, and this would have been one of them. Excellent pick, the birth of contemporary post-hardcore, and an absolute firestarter of an album.
I had this album several spots lower on my list, figuring I'd get another album to fill my post-hardcore needs if someone else took it but then you called out two of the band members on the first track of your first album pick and I panicked and moved it up like 6 places! Which I guess tells you how I feel about it. The early 2000s is when I really started exploring new music in a big way and aided by Napster/Kazaa, Allmusicguide, Amazon user reviews (before they were all fake) and the good taste of the people I met in my first couple years in college I found so much great music that I could easily fill all 20 spots with albums released between 2000 and 2010 and be completely satisfied. That's also when I branched out into blues, jazz, hip-hop, funk, and soul and played in my first bands and set myself on the path of musical discovery that I'm still on today.

Also, I added my write-up along with the track list and some live performance clips if anyone cares to go back and take a look. :)
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
With my eighth pick in the Shelter In Place Album Draft, I select:



A Farewell to Kings - Rush (1977)

Track Listing:
1 A Farewell to Kings
2 Xanadu
3 Closer to the Heart
4 Cinderella Man
5 Madrigal
6 Cygnus X-1: Book 1

It was just a matter of time before I selected a Rush album in this draft. If I were drafting purely on how influential a band was for my musical tastes, Rush would almost have to be #1. As a teenager, of course I had been exposed to rock radio and I owned some pop and rock records and that was where my taste gravitated, but there was a lot left to mold. Then one day when I was about 16 my dad took me to the local record store and had me pick out a couple of CDs (he had a new CD player!) as a gift. He encouraged me to get something that I wasn't already familiar with, and I had heard of this band Rush who I was under the impression played kinda weird D&D-style rock (I didn't know the term "prog rock" at the time) and their album covers looked pretty great, so I decided to dive in. I picked out their just-released two-disc greatest hits collection and an earlier album (not Farewell) kind of at random, and that was that. As Neil Peart, the band's great lyricist, observed on the second track here: "Never more shall I return/Escape these caves of ice/For I have dined on honeydew/And drunk the milk of Paradise."

Although Farewell wasn't my first Rush album, nor is it their most widely acclaimed, in a lot of ways it is to me their quintessential album - everything that made Rush what they were is encapsulated here. It has their first real radio hit in "Closer to the Heart". It has two long-form pieces that allow the trio to show off their musicianship and their love of bizarre time signatures in "Xanadu" (a fantasy on Coleridge's "Kubla Khan") and "Cygnus X-1", a sci-fi overture about a man who drives a rocketship into a black hole which later grew into the intro to a side-long sequel to open their next record. And the title track might be the most "Rush" song they've written - if somebody gave me five minutes to tell them what Rush is all about, I'd probably just play them "A Farewell to Kings". So, if you aren't familiar with their music, here you go:


(PM Sent)
 
I had this album several spots lower on my list, figuring I'd get another album to fill my post-hardcore needs if someone else took it but then you called out two of the band members on the first track of your first album pick and I panicked and moved it up like 6 places! Which I guess tells you how I feel about it. The early 2000s is when I really started exploring new music in a big way and aided by Napster/Kazaa, Allmusicguide, Amazon user reviews (before they were all fake) and the good taste of the people I met in my first couple years in college I found so much great music that I could easily fill all 20 spots with albums released between 2000 and 2010 and be completely satisfied. That's also when I branched out into blues, jazz, hip-hop, funk, and soul and played in my first bands and set myself on the path of musical discovery that I'm still on today.

Also, I added my write-up along with the track list and some live performance clips if anyone cares to go back and take a look. :)
Great write-up. It's such a fantastic album. I love the sheer freneticism on display. It's right in my wheelhouse. It wasn't necessarily on my radar for this draft, but I also don't have much of a strategy for this draft, other than selecting whatever's in my head at the moment my number gets called, so I just might have swiped it from you! Glad it got picked either way!
 
Well the 60’s were coming to a end and so was the end of a decade of fabulous music. With the Monterey pop festival that showcased so many break out moments for music of that era. Then the Woodstock music festival in August of 69 had and still to many the pinnacle of 60’s peace and love era.

Then it all came crashing down one day on December 6th, the peace and love of Woodstock was turned upside down and to me was a dark day for rock and roll. But music endures and sometimes I forget like lost memories until something reminds me of it.

This concert was finalized on December 4th, and my choice for my album was released on December 5th and the concert on December 6th was ALTAMONT.

So my 8th pick by The Rolling Stones is let it bleed.


1586125494683.jpg

Gimme shelter

Love in vain

Country honk

Live with me

Let it bleed

Midnight rambler

You got the silver

Monkey man

You can’t always get what you want




 
We got it from here... Thank you for your service. A tribe called quest. 2016.

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I was never keen on a new album from ATCQ. Their last two albums were rubbish. Individually they were below par. Any press they got was centered on dysfunction. Phife passed (RIP). Extended family had seemed out of touch for years (Busta), were never really that good (Consequence), or were otherwise off cooking (Jerobi). Then they put this out. It delivers more new grooves than nostalgia - yet manages to do so without escaping who they are. It was really nice that this came together so well.
 

VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
Well the 60’s were coming to a end and so was the end of a decade of fabulous music. With the Monterey pop festival that showcased so many break out moments for music of that era. Then the Woodstock music festival in August of 69 had and still to many the pinnacle of 60’s peace and love era.

Then it all came crashing down one day on December 6th, the peace and love of Woodstock was turned upside down and to me was a dark day for rock and roll. But music endures and sometimes I forget like lost memories until something reminds me of it.

This concert was finalized on December 4th, and my choice for my album was released on December 5th and the concert on December 6th was ALTAMONT...
I almost went to that concert. I was talked out of it at the last moment...
 

Warhawk

The cake is a lie.
Staff member
Jimmy Buffett - Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes (1977)

Buffettchanges.jpg

https://www.allmusic.com/album/changes-in-latitudes-changes-in-attitudes-mw0000192706

We caught this concert (2016 at the G1C, right after it opened) by accident, my in-laws ended up having a couple extra tickets because friends had to back out so we went instead. And we had a great time. The vibe was so relaxed and fun, I don't know how you couldn't enjoy yourself. Perfect for the times I want things to be a little more mellow when waiting for normalcy to return. :) Of course, I had to have Margaritaville with me just for the vibe.

From Wiki:

Changes was very popular and critically well received and was a transitional album on several levels for Buffett. In a commercial sense, it ushered in Buffett's greatest period of chart and airplay popularity - changing him from an FM cult favorite and minor hitmaker to a top-draw touring artist whose albums sold in the millions, receiving regular AM airplay at the time.

After Changes, Buffett's scope grew to include the entire Caribbean and, later, the vast expanse of what would become "world music." Buffett's Key West experiences would pepper his later work (even recording his albums in Key West's Shrimpboat Sound), but not like it did in the 1973-1977 period. It is this period, along with his 1978 and 1979 albums, that created the mythos Jimmy Buffett has parlayed into icon status as a performer, restaurateur, entrepreneur, author, and celebrity.
Track List:
1. Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes
2. Wonder Why We Ever Go Home
3. Banana Republics
4. Tampico Trauma
5. Lovely Cruise
6. Margaritaville
7. In the Shelter
8. Miss You So Badly
9. Biloxi
10. Landfall


 
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Here is precisely why I enjoy participating in these drafts. Inevitably, and sometimes indirectly, I am introduced to new material.

If you’d told me I’d take a Gorillaz album, I not only wouldn’t be able to name a single one, I’d probably ask, dismissively, if you meant the parody cartoon band I used to see on TV in the early 00s.

Yet, here we are.

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Plastic Beach - Gorillaz (2010)

I’m so new to this album, I’m not even 100% sure which of the three different covers I’ve seen is the official one.

Up until yesterday, I don’t recall having heard of Plastic Beach at all. But because these drafts often inspire me to explore, I came across this gem, and immediately decided I needed to have it. No I’m not that easily charmed. I've listened to dozens of albums looking for more content to fill my roster ranks in the past several weeks of quarantine, even coming across of few I really WANT to like, but simply can't. This is one, like OK Computer and The ArchAndroid, I knew I loved from the onset. Listening to Plastic Beach was uniquely therapeutic

It’s officially classified as “electro pop” and “trip hop” but there are so many different sounds and influences on this thing, ranging from classic orchestral to vague elements of surf rock, that I think this album transcends a classification.

It’s really a sonic journey that is constantly switching up styles and approaches. Even when I start out feeling decidedly 'meh' about a song, it quickly gets experimental, playing with the soundscape it established mere seconds before, enriching the experience nigh-immediately, making things suddenly interesting. It’s positively mesmerizing.

I find that exemplified on the title track, in which the song starts out with a breezy, traditional beach sound, but by the end has shifted to something completely mechanized and inorganic encompassing the album’s theme.


Tracklist
1."Orchestral Intro"
2."Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach" (with Snoop Dogg)
3."White Flag" (with Bashy and Kano)
4."Rhinestone Eyes"
5."Stylo" (with Mos Def feat. Bobby Womack)
6."Superfast Jellyfish" (with De La Soul, Gruff Rhys)
7."Empire Ants" (with Yukimi Nagano)
8."Glitter Freeze" (with Mark E. Smith)
9."Some Kind of Nature" (with Lou Reed)
10."On Melancholy Hill"
11."Broken"
12."Sweepstakes" (with Mos Def)
13."Plastic Beach
14."To Binge" (with Yukimi Nagano)
15."Cloud of Unknowing" (feat. Bobby Womack)
16."Pirate Jet”

Addendum: You all are getting to see a guy discover one of his favorite albums in real-time. I am in those first stages of infatuation when the new interpretations of the experience are rapidly rolling in and it’s all so exhilarating.

I posted the song that I thought was the best introduction (even though it comes near the end) to the album for the uninitiated, and I still stand by that currently.

But these two songs are thrilling as well. Snoop delivers what could be considered the proper lead off song (because the true first song is an orchestral instrumental that sets up Snoop) and it really highlights both the Gorillaz techno-funk instrumental and and Snoop’s lyrical flow strengths.


Sweepstakes I initially passed off a skip-able song or at best basic filler and not particularly noteworthy. But it keeps adding complexity and building on top of itself until the whole thing feels like a party incarnate.

 
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VF21

Super Moderator Emeritus
SME
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In Search of the Lost Chord - Moody Blues - 1968

Wikipedia: In Search of the Lost Chord is a concept album around a broad theme of quest and discovery [translation from VF: inspired by Timothy Leary and all he stood for], including world exploration ("Dr. Livingstone, I Presume"), music and philosophy through the ages ("House of Four Doors"), lost love ("The Actor"), spiritual development ("Voices in the Sky"), knowledge in a changing world ("Ride My See-Saw"), higher consciousness ("Legend of a Mind"), imagination ("The Best Way to Travel"), and space exploration ("Departure").

Side A
1. "Departure"
2. "Ride My See-Saw"
3. "Dr. Livingstone, I Presume"
4. "House of Four Doors"
5. "Legend of a Mind"
6. "House of Four Doors (Part 2)"
Side B
1. "Voices in the Sky"
2. "The Best Way to Travel"
3. "Visions of Paradise"
4. "The Actor"
5. "The Word"
6. "Om"

If a movie were ever to be made of my life, The Moody Blues would definitely be part of the soundtrack. I agonized long and hard about this pick...there are more conventional MB albums with more familiar songs but this is the one that calls to me the most. I'm guessing if you're not a fan of The Moody Blues, you may have never heard these songs:


 
Ghostface Killah - Supreme Clientele (2000):



01 Intro
02 Nutmeg (feat. RZA)
03 One
04 Saturday Nite
05 Ghost Deini
06 Apollo Kids (feat. Raekwon)
07 The Grain (feat. RZA)
08 Buck 50 (feat. Method Man, Redman, & Cappadonna)
09 Mighty Healthy
10 Woodrow the Base Head (skit)
11 Stay True
12 We Made It (feat. Superb, Chip Banks, & Hell Razah)
13 Stroke of Death (feat. Solomon Childs & RZA)
14 Iron's Theme - Intermission
15 Malcolm
16 Who Would You F*** (skit)
17 Child's Play
18 Cherchez La Ghost (feat. U-God)
19 Wu Banga 101 (feat. GZA, Raekwon, Cappadonna, & Masta Killa)
20 Clyde Smith (skit)
21 Iron's Theme - Conclusion

Genre: Hip hop

@hrdboild's last pick got me thinking about the turn of the millennium. The panic over Y2K seems absolutely quaint from where we're all sitting today, the fashion of the moment was horrifically tacky, the preponderance of bleached blonde hair was even worse, and the 2000 NBA draft was historically awful... but despite all of our cultural growing pains as we left the 20th century behind, it was still a really great year for seminal albums. My favorite of the year is too obvious a pick for me, and I'm certain I selected it in the last music draft I participated in. At the Drive-In's Relationship of Command would be my third favorite album of 2000, but it is now off the board. So that brings me to my second favorite album of that year, Supreme Clientele.

By my reckoning, Ghostface Killah was always the most skilled member of the larger rap crew to which he belonged. Other members were "harder," others were better storytellers, others became more individually famous (trying to provide proper context for this album without breaking the draft rules - a bad habit of mine - is killing me), but the great Ghost Deini has always been the wordsmith of the bunch, a street poet cloaked in the trappings of rap royalty, and Supreme Clientele is his psychedelic, Ginsbergian Howl into the [concrete] jungle. I f***ing adore this record. It's a love letter to rap music, to the sheer joy found in rhyme and rhythm.

Supreme Clientele is hip hop at its most extravagant, and I don't mean that it basks in materialism (though it does so on occasion, and to gloriously preposterous effect). This album sees Ghostface luxuriating in the chaotic collisions that words can make, like a child smashing action figures together with a logic that only they can understand, if that child grew up to be an extraordinarily gifted rapper who uses "Iron Man" as a second moniker. Few rappers have his dexterity, his precision, his sheer sense of joy when piling images on top of metaphors on top of drug running stories on top of obscure comic book references on top of even more obscure kung-fu movie references in a deeply enigmatic stream-of-consciousness that would make even the likes of Faulkner and Joyce envious.

It may all seem like it's "a little inside" or "a bit too dense," but don't mistake the inscrutability of Supreme Clientele for a lack of artistic intent. Ghost started writing this record while in the midst of a difficult fight with diabetes. Unsatisfied with western medicine, he retreated to the country of Benin (the birthplace of voodoo) in West Africa where he sought treatment from a bush doctor. He lived there for months, without running water, and amidst his fever dreams he began penning many of the songs that appear on Supreme Clientele. Ghost is very much at play in the sandbox here, but he's also clearly digging around for new ways to describe old truths, old grudges, old hurts.
 
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Persepolis - Iannis Xenakis (1972)

R-8409898-1461063149-4064.jpeg.jpg

https://www.discogs.com/Xenakis-Persepolis/master/95842
If David Lynch's Eraserhead and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey had a baby, and that baby was a record, it would be Iannis Xenakis' Persepolis. Contained on this record, a wide variety of sonic textures are layered on top of each other and come and go as the music subtly transforms while maintaining a constant feeling of gravity and impending consequence. It's reminiscent of both the beauty and fear of the unknown.

Tracklist

01 - Persepolis (Début)
02 - Persepolis (Fin)

 
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hrdboild

Hall of Famer
CunninLynguists - A Piece of Strange (2006)


(https://www.allmusic.com/album/a-piece-of-strange-mw0000344284)

01. Where Will You Be?
02. Since When
03. Nothing to Give
04. Caved In (ft. Cee Lo Green)
05. Hourglass
06. Beautiful Girl
07. Inhale (Interlude)
08. Brain Cell
09. America Loves Gangsters
10. Never Know Why (ft. Immortal Technique)
11. The Gates (ft. Tonedeff)
12. Damnation (Interlude)
13. Hellfire
14. Remember Me (Abstract/Reality)
15. What'll You Do?
16. The Light
Before I joined kingsfans.com and started annoying you all with my long-winded contrarian views about basketball I was an active member of an online community called New Element that was dedicated to creating content for the computer game RollerCoaster Tycoon. The kid who ran the site and I became good friends and when this album came out he went track by track explaining how each song fit into the overall narrative arc. A concept album about temptation, original sin, and that very human quality of taking a perfectly good thing and messing it up because you can't help feeling like you want something more, A Piece of Strange takes you on a journey to death and beyond. It's got instrumental jams, fiercely delivered rhymes, and a thrilling denouement in The Light which is one of my all-time favorite tracks.

Founded as a novelty act with a goofy name, this album was a turning point for producer Kno and main emcee Deacon the Villain as they changed their focus to social commentary and exploring the nature of the ego, a path they've continued to tread up until the present. Deacon and new member Natti consistently impress with their verses throughout but the production is so richly detailed in jazz and soul inflected textures that it's really the star of the album. This was a real gateway drug for me into the bigger world of Hip-Hop precisely because it offers something I hadn't found anywhere else -- a synthesis of all musical styles into a sugary sweet cocktail of choice grooves and licks that sounds both old-fashioned and brazenly original at the same time. Kno is the curator of this musical journey, the musical sommelier so to speak, and his good taste makes a strong case for the artistic significance of musical synthesis as a fertile and emerging supplement to traditional forms of composition.


BONUS: This song isn't on the album but I love this acoustic performance so much I'm required to share it with as many people as possible!

 
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David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars



I think if you were to compare my 2008 draft and this draft during the middle rounds you would find that in 2008 I was really hitting hard on albums that influenced me whereas right now I am digging back a little further and getting the stuff that would influence my influences. And that's really emblematic of my quarantine/isolation right now. Every night after I finish my work day I retreat down into the basement for a bit and try to pick up a new guitar riff or lead and just grow/expand a bit. Most of what I play is some kind of glam derived punk or metal and Bowie in the early 70s really paved the way for at least one or two of my later round plans.

This album contains perhaps my favorite Bowie track of all time, Suffragette City along with two other favorites, Moonage Daydream and Ziggy Stardust. Those are three of the more guitar driven numbers, no surprise I guess, but there's also the piano driven Star and the acoustic strummer with a big finish at the end in Rock 'n' Roll Suicide.

The album is loosely a concept album, and seems appropriate for the time.
Dangerous Minds Article
What you have there on that album when it does finally come out, is a story which doesn’t really take place, it’s just a few little scenes from the life of a band called Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars, who could feasibly be the last band on Earth—it could be within the last five years of Earth. I’m not at all sure. Because I wrote it in such a way that I just dropped the numbers into the album in any order that they cropped up. It depends in which state you listen to it in.
Side one
  1. "Five Years" – 4:42
  2. "Soul Love" – 3:34
  3. "Moonage Daydream" – 4:40
  4. "Starman" – 4:10
  5. "It Ain't Easy" (Ron Davies) – 2:58
Side two
  1. "Lady Stardust" – 3:22
  2. "Star" – 2:47
  3. "Hang On to Yourself" – 2:40
  4. "Ziggy Stardust" – 3:13
  5. "Suffragette City" – 3:25
  6. "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" – 2:58
 
Screen Shot 2020-04-07 at 1.56.37 PM.png

1. "Burnout"
2. "Having a Blast"
3. "Chump"
4. "Longview"
5. "Welcome to Paradise"
6. "Pulling Teeth"
7. "Basket Case"
8. "She"
9. "Sassafras Roots"
10. "When I Come Around"
11. "Coming Clean"
12. "Emenius Sleepus"
13. "In the End"
14. "F.O.D." (song ends at 2:50, followed by hidden track "All by Myself" written and performed by Tré Cool, which starts at 4:07)

Welcome to Paradise is probably my favorite song off of this album, even though Longview and Basket Case got quite a bit more airplay.
Most of these songs got quite a bit of airplay. My guilty pleasure off of this album (and a song I like to cover) is All by Myself. A two-minute ditty about...well...being by yourself.

I'm hoping the Hella Mega tour happens this year, because the show is 3 miles from my house in Denver, and the kid wants to go.
 
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Solid pick. I would have grabbed it in a late round if nobody else did. I have a lot of feelings about their later work, most of them not good, but damn that album is great. Having a Blast is my favorite.
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

Doryphore of KingsFans.com
Staff member
Looks like @Spike forgot to send the PM. Anyway... So, I mentioned when I made my third pick that I bought my first CD player, straight out of boot camp, in addition to my first four CDs. One of them was Diamonds and Pearls (3rd pick), two of them are ineligible for this draft, due to being Greatest Hits collections. Here is the fourth:









2Pac - Me Against the World (1995)


This album was released the week before I reported to boot camp, and the first time I heard any of it was when I was actually in boot camp: I first heard "Dear Mama" when I was in the middle of Service Week. "So Many Tears" became my go-to cooldown song, after PT; like, I would deadass go back to my barracks after PT, fire up my CD player, skip straight to Track 4, and play it, while waiting on my turn in the shower. It's the only 2Pac album that I can listen to, from beginning to end, with no skips, and one of only two or three rap albums from the "Gangsta Rap" subgenre that I **** with. Me Against the World peaked at Number One on the US Charts, and was certified triple platinum by the RIAA.


Track listing (no links, except to "Dear Mama," due to NSFW. Songs released as singles in bold):
  1. "Intro"
  2. "If I Die 2Nite"
  3. "Me Against the World" (featuring Dramacydal)
  4. "So Many Tears"
  5. "Temptations"
  6. "Young N****z"
  7. "Heavy in the Game" (featuring Richie Rich)
  8. "Lord Knows"
  9. "Dear Mama"
  10. "It Ain't Easy"
  11. "Can U Get Away"
  12. "Old School"
  13. "**** the World"
  14. "Death Around the Corner"
  15. "Outlaw" (featuring Dramacydal)


Source: Wikipedia
 

Capt. Factorial

trifolium contra tempestatem subrigere certum est
Staff member
With my ninth pick in the Shelter-In-Place Album Draft, I select:



Poodle Hat - "Weird Al" Yankovic (2003)

Track Listing:
1 Couch Potato
2 Hardware Store
3 Trash Day
4 Party at the Leper Colony
5 Angry White Boy Polka
6 Wanna B Ur Lovr
7 A Complicated Song
8 Why Does This Always Happen to Me?
9 Ode to a Superhero
10 Bob
11 Ebay
12 Genius in France

It just wouldn't be right sheltering in place without something to listen to that's just plain fun. I had really no choice but to select a Weird Al album, the only question was which? It's hard for me to say that I have a FAVORITE Weird Al album, but Poodle Hat at least comes in among the top. The opening track, "Couch Potato", is perhaps my favorite parody he has done, though I can't say who it's a parody of as the artist hasn't been picked yet (nor can I for the other four parodies on the album - so enough of those). I can point out that "Bob" is a Bob Dylan style parody (not a parody of a specific song) and the only song I know that dares to ask the question "May a moody baby doom a yam?" and then insists "Go hang a salami, I'm a lasagna hog!" (Yep, the whole thing is in palindromes.) "Hardware Store" always makes me think of my dad - if my dad was on hard-core amphetamines. And "Wanna B Ur Lovr" is the ultimate in bad pickup lines strung together for six minutes: "You're absolutely perfect/Don't speak now, you might spoil it/Your eyes are even bluer than the water in my toilet."

But the song that really pushed me over the edge to choose Poodle Hat was the closer, which is my kind of diss track, where Al spends almost 9 minutes going off on France while doing a frenetic style parody of - of another artist whose work hasn't yet been selected in this draft. "When I'm in Provence/I get free croissants/Yeah I'm the guy every French lady wants" - what more can you ask for?

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